Various types of fireplaces are known in the art. One traditional type of fireplace is a masonry fireplace which is built into a room of a house or other dwelling unit. Such a fireplace has a masonry firebox and a masonry chimney which extends upwardly to vent above the roof of a house. While these fireplaces may be decorative, their heating efficiency is very low. Further, these fireplaces are necessarily fixed in place and require that a room be decorated around the location of the fireplace.
One way to solve this problem has been to use free-standing fireplaces. These fireplaces may be positioned at any desired location in a room. However, unless the fireplace is heavily insulated or cooled by some means, the fireplace becomes very hot during operation and is capable of burning an unwary child.
One way to cool, or at least partially cool, the exterior surface of a fireplace is to add additional casings to the exterior of the fireplace in which insulation may be placed or through which air may be channelled. One disadvantage with this technique is that the use of the additional casings, as well as the insulation, add to the weight and bulk of a fireplace.
A further disadvantage of this technique is that the addition of casings, and passages within the casings, increases the number of steps required in the manufacture of the fireplace. This added complexity increases the overall cost of the fireplace. This is particularly the case if the fireplace is designed to burn natural gas or propane. Such fireplaces must have a sealed firebox and, accordingly, they must have sealed passages which are connected with an external source of oxygen and an external source for venting the combustion gases. Typically, such fireplaces are vented to the outdoors. The passages for the combustion air to travel from the outdoors into the firebox and the combustion gases to travel from the firebox to the outdoors must necessarily pass through at least some of the additional casings. Accordingly, the addition of casings to provide internal air flow passages can become highly labour intensive due to the need to maintain the combustion and exhaust air passages air-tight as they pass through the additional casings.